The immense cost of capturing the island, in human and material terms, did undoubtedly have a considerable influence on the decision to use atomic weapons. American leaders were left in no doubt that the losses in American lives increased dramatically the closer they came to the Japanese homeland. The experience of Okinawa . . . the most brutal military engagement between American and Japanese forces in the war . . . convinced them that invasion was too high a price to pay. — Ian Gow, military historian
